We’re going to cover something slightly out of the norm, a game museum! Why? Because video games deserve one too, they’ve been around since the 70s, and they are one of the world’s fastest-growing industries. Case in point, they deserve it.

Yeah, the name sounds Japanese. Yeah, there’s museum in it too. And also, yes, it’s bound to be something out of the ordinary, just like you would expect from our iconoclastic friends of Nihon. A Museum wholesomely dedicated to games, you say? Indeed, just like the trials and errors Cinema had to undergo before it was considered an independent and worthy art form, so have video games been establishing their artistic merit for decades.

The Huis Ten Bosch Theme Park

But wait! There’s more! The museum itself is located in a sort of bizarre theme park. While it is a theme park, its theme seems to be… the recreation of the Netherlands. Yes. You read it right, complete with windmills, canals, a park, etc. There’s plenty of these out there in the east, and the Chinese are master experts in this practice, and this one is pretty old. I mean, it opened in ’92 and features a plethora of attractions such as hotels, theatres, shops (it is a theme “park” after all), restaurants and, obviously, museums. Well, it had to have at least one, right? It’s in the name of the article. But what makes this museum rather odd (and I bet there’s still people begging it doesn’t display anything of any value, let alone artistic merit) is its focus on Video Games. Without further ado, let us take a peek at it!

The entrance to the museum is in line with the gaming culture, displaying a pixelated typography, and an adorable nod to the aliens of Space Invader. Neat.

Talk about the devil, uh? It actually looks like one of the original Space Invaders Cabinets, but with the coin slot shut with a description. It is a museum piece now, coins shouldn’t be thrust into it.

This is what experts usually identify as NES: Non-Expendable Soup. You can see how it behaves behind the glass, away from its natural eco-system… What should I say? Everyone knows the legend! The Nintendo Entertainment System kickstarted the whole video game revolution back in 83 after it was nearly destroyed to oblivion during the famed Video Game Crash of 1983.

These look like really old pseudo-computers, but the top one is actually an Intellivision, by Mattel Electronics back in 1980. It sold well, and it is a legend in its own right. The one on the lower shelf is a Vectrex, by Western Technologies/Smith Engineering. It was released in 82 and was one of the victims of the Great Video Game Crash. Neat.

Unbelievable! A Nintendo 64 with a DD64, an add-on released for the N64 in 1999, so that the cartridge-based console could play disks. It never caught wind and eventually sold very little. Right underneath it is another tragic story of video game history: the Dreamcast. Released by SEGA in 1998, it eventually turned out to be the last home-console SEGA would ever develop. In some aspects, it was a beast ahead of its time, but a myriad of problems ended up contributing to its downfall. Two of them? The Playstation and Playstation 2.

Everyone knows about these, as they are pretty recent and still very much ingrained in our pop-culture, especially the PS4, PS3, Xbox360, and the Nintendo Wii and Wii U. The two handhelds? A Nintendo 3DS and the PS Vita.

It might not be the biggest museum in the world, and it might not have those Egyptian sarcophaguses and a painting or two that everyone loves, but it still covers video game world’s early consoles all the way to actuality. There’s not Xbox One, though. Why? Nobody likes it in Japan, ah!

In actual truth, at the time of the museum’s opening, it hadn’t been released in Japan yet.

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